


missing limb solidarity club

by pocketpauling



Series: black mesa trauma club official meeting room [2]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom
Genre: i like this oc now actually you will all look at my oc and care them, prosthetic arm talk dw about it. disabled ppl solidarity, something short. little lore for rory in case anyone cared
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24586693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketpauling/pseuds/pocketpauling
Summary: Gordon and his younger sibling have a super short and super unwanted chat late at night about losing limbs. Gordon finally understands, but Rory's been over it for a decade. Oh well!
Series: black mesa trauma club official meeting room [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1769725
Comments: 6
Kudos: 68





	missing limb solidarity club

It was late when Gordon, Tommy, and Benry got back home from a very typically disastrous date night, same as its always been. No matter how many times they go out, no matter how long it’s been, Benry _will_ find a way to mess up whatever plans they make.

Rory had been left with Josh, promising to watch him for free, sure, Gordon, just wanted to see their nephew for once, _God._ They’d rushed them out the door, bouncing Joshua in their arms, signing ‘bye-bye’ with Joshie over and over as the trio climbed into Gordon’s stupid car.

Midnight, or somewhere thereabouts, was when they got back. Gordon unlocked the door, not exactly expecting too see Rory on the couch, curled up with Joshua sleeping on their lap. They were sleeping too, head lolling to the side, at risk of rolling right off the couch and onto the floor.

Aww, what a shame it would be for someone to take pictures and send them to the whole family.

Tommy and Benry were kind enough to be quiet behind him, taking his bag and coat so that he could fish his phone out to take 500 pictures of his extremely-violent-and-tough-acting little sibling in a rare moment of being unsettlingly soft. Could it kill them to be nice? For once? Around someone besides Joshua? If he could avoid being punched every time they talked to each other, it’d be great.

Cute pics, though! Mom would love to see this. He hoped the notifications wouldn’t wake her up.

Benry and Tommy, admittedly, didn’t talk to Rory enough to have all the cool lore associated with their character, so they left Gordon alone to wake them up and get them out of the house so everyone can go to bed.

Weird that they didn’t put Joshua to sleep in his own room, though. They’d never really strayed from his instructions, even since the first night he’d knocked on their door, too tired to even realize he was signing to them instead of speaking. Rory had understood. Rory took Joshua and let Gordon crash right there on their couch, even if they still weren’t getting along back then. They put all that baggage aside for Gordon’s kid.

Rory always had a soft spot for kids, and they took this kind of shit _so_ fucking seriously. ‘Taking care of children right is an _art_ , Gordon’ and all that. They wouldn’t have admitted they cared about Gordon’s wellbeing too unless you put a gun to their head. Hell, even then. Little siblings, haha. Can’t let people know you care, right?

He almost didn’t want to wake them up – they’d been exhausted lately, trying to update _something_ on their prosthetic. Speaking of which, it, at the moment, was sitting on the coffee table. Man, it must be really uncomfortable these days if they removed it, even to sleep. Rory didn’t like being without it.

Gordon was uncomfortable in the fact that there was solidarity there. Not about being disabled, but that either of them had to lose a limb in the first place. Wasn’t fair, but at least Gordon had been an adult when it happened. He still had no way of talking to them about their trauma without them shutting the conversation down instantly.

He tapped their shoulder and was met with louder snoring. More taps, and nothing. He really didn’t want to shake them awake, but he needed them to let go of Josh and go _home_. Gordon grabbed onto their shoulder and shook them just hard enough to hopefully get them up.

Rory woke up shouting, incomprehensible, and – God, yeah, okay, it had been a nightmare. They must not have been asleep for long if he was the one who woke them up from it. Shit. He had no real reason to be guilty, but that’s never stopped him.

Gordon let go of them immediately, but didn’t put too much distance between them, in case they might need, like, a hug or something. Unlikely, but it could happen. “Hey, hey, it’s fine. You’re fine.”

Rory’s eyes focused on him, and, after a moment, they laid back against the sofa, trying to rock Joshua back to sleep. “Shut up, Gordon.”

He sighed, knowing it was too much to hope they would act like a normal person. “Just trying to help.”

“Don’t need your pity. Just a nightmare, nerd. Happens.”

“I know it happens, Rory, it’s just – do you want to talk about it?”

Rory laughed, purely out of annoyance, and gently set Joshua in Gordon’s arms as he took his place next to them on the couch. The room fell into an uncomfortable silence, like the kind you have at a new therapist when they ask you a hard question and you try to figure out how to explain your trauma to a complete stranger without sounding fucking off-the-walls bonkers.

Their hand hovered over the prosthetic on the table when Gordon spoke again, “You don’t have to just… deal with it on your own. I get it now, it’s hard to talk about, but we can try – “

“Oh, could you fucking can it with the ‘I understand now’ bullshit? I went to therapy every week for eight years, Gordon, I’m not a terrified 15 year old anymore.” And they weren’t. It wasn’t a lie – they’d gotten so far with accepting it and learning to love themselves after everything that had happened. The occasional nightmares were so much tamer than they had ever been.

Gordon wasn’t really responding, and Rory just figured that was the go-ahead to lay into him some more.

“You do that a lot. You treat everyone around you like they’re kids. I get you’ve always had the I’m-everyone’s-big-brother complex, but it’s gotten so much fucking worse since you had Josh. You’re not my dad. Why don’t we talk about _you_ , huh?”

“ _Me_?”

Rory finally picked up their prosthetic arm and clicked it into place, trying to make whatever the next best thing to extremely serious eye contact was. “Yeah, you. You lost your arm in some workplace accident, right? You don’t talk about it. So, uh, let’s talk.”

“I – I don’t have to talk about it, because it’s fine.”

“Funny joke. What did that to you? What kind of fucked up government-sanctioned experiment took your fuckin’ arm off, dude?”

“Nothing – nobody did anything, there wasn’t any kind of – he – they didn’t – “

“Gordon, you’re fucking awful at lying. You gonna sue Black Mesa or what?”

“It, uh. It wasn’t Black Mesa that did it, Rory.”

“Oh, fuck. Who?”

“Nobody! Nobody – they didn’t know that they were gonna cut it off, so – “

“ _They?_ ” Rory grabbed Gordon’s prosthetic arm with their own, voice low, “Who did this to you?”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Rory was the kind of person to beat the shit out of Gordon’s bullies in school for fun, for _sport_. If they knew it was Benry and Bubby who caused it, they’d ruin their entire lives. Benry would respawn just to die again. Shit. “The – the military. Some soldiers. Dead now. They were trying to kill the rest of the scientists and they got me, but I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Their grip on his prosthetic was so strong, he knew it’d hurt if he still had his hand. Rory’s gaze was miles away, somewhere over his shoulder now, out the kitchen window. “Fine. Fine,” They backed off, letting go of his hand, standing up to collect their things. “I’ll let it go. Can’t make you talk about it.”

Gordon let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks.”

He sat there on the couch, Joshua still asleep, watching Rory exhaustion-struggle their way to the door. They pulled it open and stood there, trying to put together the words they wanted to say. Nothing too soft, nothing nice. Wanted to make a promise, a deadly one, before they made their way across the street and back home.

“ _I’m_ not lying, Gordon, when I tell you that you’re an awful liar. When I find out who did that to you, I’m going to make them _wish_ they were dead.”

“I’m sure you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> rory is super far down the road to recovery and is having problems talking to someone still in the "denial" stage. we've all been there. they wanna show they care but they have to be distant and moody bc thats the life of a youngest sibling i fucking guess.
> 
> rory lost their left arm in a car accident at 15, in which they were the only survivor. this lore will likely never be expressly written anywhere bc rory doesnt like to rehash history again and again and theyve been dealin w it. coping. healthy. just dont wanna bother gordon w it hes got enough on his plate
> 
> they created their own prosthetic bc at the time no one was and honestly no one IS making affordable advanced ones and they dream about mass marketing them to make them more accessible for ppl who need and/or want them. but they gotta make sure they work perfectly first


End file.
